nights at the Jazz Standard, each of them highlighting a different performance perspective. The unexpected has become the expected where this high-wire trumpeter is concerned. Douglas is perpetually scouting for fresh settings, new musical concepts and unfamiliar terrain where he's able to stretch his abilities, to heighten an already fearsome virtuosity and communicative playing passion. Three out of the four combos were premiering unexplored parameters. The second evening teamed Douglas with the new music ensemble So Percussion

, setting out to combine the repertoires of his recent Perpetual Motion (2011) with the songbook of Douglas's own Keystone combo (the McCaslin disc was released by Greenleaf Music, so it's all in the Douglas family). Key Motion also features drummer Mark Guiliana

who, in addition to playing on the album, is also a Keystone regular. Despite this grafting of personnel and songbooks, the resultant band became something else again, partly due to the sheer excitement of its live presence, and partly because the music has clearly evolved, tightening its rubbery looseness.

Both Benjamin and Lefebvre were dedicated to the electronic perversion of their instruments, emitting sounds through a veil of knobberydistorting, fragmenting, spangling, cutting, cracking and frostingbut invariably sounding like themselves. In a demonic pact with Guiliana, they set about turning fusion into a darkly funky, subliminally threatening beast. The rhythms were jittery, the interlocks were on the run, and the punch was deep down at bowel level. The front line of horns was left to dwell in a comparatively traditional house of jazz rules, spurting a constant alarum and operating at a flashing level of execution. Douglas talked directly into his trumpet, shaping phrases whether crisply muted or outwardly expelled. McCaslin's tone was less vocal, more liquid, like a subterranean current, searching for its blowhole. It was as if the old bebop language had been forced to mutate into a new form that was more of a patchwork, urged towards a greater schizophrenia by the rhythm team's twitching constructions.

Key Motion is developing a dub jazz vocabulary. During McCaslin's "Energy Generation," Lefebvre flooded his volume control up to full with his pinky, intermittently creating a low bleed of sub-tones. Guiliana was the master of strictly controlled cymbal skitters and self-muted clumping blows, while Benjamin played his Fender Rhodes with one hand, adjusting his effects filtration unit with the other. If eyes were closed, some of this threesome's sounds would shade into each others' corners. This first set found a band sounding as if they'd been closely twinned for quite some time. The rapport was deeply locking into place. All elements were perfectly interrelatedthe groove, the tunes, the momentum, the tension, the band stance of playful humor, the ripping horn solos over innovative soundscapes, and the sense that spotlighted passages were being taken in unpredictable ratios and in surprising sequences; not always alone, but in headlong tandem. Audience attention was totally gripped throughout.

Wadada Leo Smith Roulette December 16, 2011

How many birthday cakes can a trumpeter gobble? To celebrate his 70th year, the Interpretations Series presented two nights of new music from Wadada Leo Smith

at Brooklyn's recently transplanted Roulette. This meant three bands each night and a communal cake at the end of each evening. Smith's actual birthday fell two days after the second gig, so maybe there were more cakes on the way. The first evening's candles were of the frustratingly fire-hazard kind that spring back into life after being extinguished, with Smith blowing them out through his trumpet, which seemed like a highly appropriate act. The first night's proceedings were constructed very contrastingly with the second session. Each of the three sets (the Mbira trio, a string quartet with singer Thomas Buckner, and the Golden Quartet) restrained themselves to around thirty minutes apiece, and the show concluded surprisingly early.